*BSD News Article 2730


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From: cflatter@nrao.edu (Chris Flatters)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: 386BSD-0.1/BRLCAD4.0 benchmark -- poor floa
Message-ID: <1992Jul29.152914.2508@nrao.edu>
Date: 29 Jul 92 15:29:14 GMT
References: <l7ctu0INN880@neuro.usc.edu>
Sender: news@nrao.edu
Reply-To: cflatter@nrao.edu
Organization: NRAO
Lines: 20

In article l7ctu0INN880@neuro.usc.edu, merlin@neuro.usc.edu (merlin) writes:
>It looks like the floating point processor is used for simple floating
>point operations (+, -, /, *) but not for higher functions -- these go
>to /usr/src/lib/libm/ieee/support.c where they get emulated (ie _sqrt)
>very slowly.  Perhaps someone has a redistributable i386 library which
>could be plugged in place of the default 4.3BSD mathematics library.
>
>This is likely why BRLCAD 4.0 runs correctly but very slowly at the
>present time.  Any help or suggestions which would fix this problem
>would be very much appreciated.  
>
>Does gcc 2.2 actually use 80387 inline code for transcedental functions?

No. I just looked :-(.  (Unless it is very well hidden).

It could probably be made to though.  There appears to be some support for
inlining transcendental functions for the Moto 68881.

	Chris Flatters
	cflatter@nrao.edu